Archive for September 2007

Lottso! Deluxe rolls together bingo, lottery scratch cards, luck and competition. Because of its originality and combination of several games in one, I am rooting for this one to be a hit. Unfortunately, it fails to live up to expectations. I didn’t want to play the game anymore within an hour, but kept playing in hopes it would improve. It didn’t.

The game starts out amusing, but it isn’t long before it turns repetitious. Also, it relies too much on luck. Here’s how the game works: You compete against four computer players, receive six lottery-ish cards and six randomly selected numbered bingo-style balls (anywhere between 1 and 12 along with power ups), and play ten 25-second rounds.

One note before going further, the game comes from Electronic Arts and Pogo.com, an online community-based gaming site. Lottso! Deluxe might be more fun with real players instead of the computer as your opponents. But this option isn’t available in my version. I research this and find nothing explaining why, or if there are different editions. So if you want to play the multiplayer version, check with the vendor (if other than Pogo.com) before buying.

Hurry in choosing your “Charm” number before the next round of bingo balls pop up. If any of the balls match the selected “Charm” number, you earn a bonus. As soon as you see your bingo numbers, place the balls anywhere on the six cards that have their matching numbers. You may not be able to match them all. Occasionally, a card will come with a “free” spot in which you can place any bingo ball on it. Or you could score the star bingo ball that works like a Joker or wild card.

When you fill all the numbers on a card and activate the card, select the boxes to win the best score possible. The nine cards vary in how they work. Scratch cards let you scratch until you run into a frowny face known as the spoiler. You pick one box to scratch in hopes that it’s the largest amount.

The trade in card requires making a decision where you decide whether you want to keep the amount you have on the card or delete it and try for a higher amount. Lottso! is a progressive jackpot card that grows with every round until someone wins. If a card’s marquee lights up, then you win bonus points if you activate that card numbers in that round.

You receive the goals for a game parlor when you enter. These are the goals for advancing to another parlor. Though, it isn’t clear how this works because I am STILL trying to score 3000 points in one hand, but I could move on to the next parlor. I believe you can unlock a parlor after you reach the number of needed points rather than meeting all goals.

The power ups don’t excite at all. Amnesia makes the player forget and stops playing for the round. The tornado blows away the selected player’s numbers. Swap cards replaces your cards with a selected opponent’s card.

Overall, Lottso! Deluxe is onto something, but still needs work. The game is probably more fun with other human players since you can chat with them to try to score a Team Lottso bonus based on a cooperative card. Its value depends on how many players finish the card in one round. Playing the game for an hour may be all you can take. It was for me.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows ME/98/2000/XP
• 500 MHz or faster processor
• 256 MB RAM
• DirectX 7.0 or later

• But they did not give up lists successful people who were told they would not succeed. [Thanks, Lifehack]
• Designing Sidekicks for Fashion Target Breast Cancer. A little wild for my taste, but a great idea and cause.
• 6 Lies about Creative Writing.
• 5 tips for giving feedback on creative work
• 101 reasons freelancers do it better. [Thanks, Freelance Folder]

Priscilla Palmer’s Personal Development List contains a long list of blogs worth reading that touch on personal development. The extensive list already contains the blogs I enjoy (Adversity University, Today Is That Day, and Lifehack).

Here are a couple more to add: Jenna Glatzer, Christina Katz, and Dawn Goldberg. They are all talented writers who share their experiences balancing their personal and writer lives.

Taking cue from The One Minute Manager, Zapp!, Fish! and Who Moved My Cheese?, The Hamster Revolution uses a parable to show how to better manage and organize e-mail and information. The hamster represents people endlessly running on the wheel of e-mail. Right away, I start using concepts from the 90-minute book. Considering I’m an organized person, that says something.

In the story, Harold the Hamster receives a visit from an information coach to help him with e-mail and information management. Harold is a person who turned into a hamster because e-mail and information trapped him on a figurative hamster wheel.

Harold and his coach think aloud as they explore his e-mail habits and inbox to find the problem areas. The banter between the two gives the reader insight into why something doesn’t work and how to fix it. Their comments mirror what many of us think when we’re drowning in messages. Though cheesy at times, the story quickly explains the how, what, and why without confusing readers with dry writing.

I was eager to discover the secret of COTA, the concept for creating folders named Clients, Output, Teams and Administration. COTA also represents the order of priority. The Clients folder receives top honors on the hierarchy than Output. Administration gets thrown to the bottom of the pile where it belongs. But this concept isn’t as foolproof as the authors make it sound.

They state that you won’t run into a situation when an email or document belongs in two folders. However, if that should happen — then the document belongs in the one higher up on the COTA ladder. Furthermore, the system serves departments and teams best.

COTA won’t work well for personal use (the authors apparently have another system for this, but information isn’t available yet) or a small business like mine where I’m a freelancer working on a computer that houses both business and personal information.

Furthermore, not everyone will know what some things mean such as EOM (end of message) or NRN (no reply needed). These require teaching others and a team setting would adapt to that better than a lone person who must explain it in many individuals. EOM and NRN should become as standard as smilies, but they’re far from there.

Some advice might sound common sense or old news to some people, but the authors share lesser known or new concepts. The book has had positive impact on my e-mail habits, and for what it is worth, that opinion comes from a long-time e-mail user (the days of BBSes — pre-Internet).

• Title: The Hamster Revolution: How to Manage Your Email Before It Manages You
• Author: Mike Song, Vicki Halsey & Tim Burress
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• ISBN: 1576754375
• Date: January 2007
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 128
• Cover Price:12pt”> USD: $19.95 Amazon: $13.57

I enjoyed Hidden Expedition: Everest and recently tried Hidden Expedition: Titanic. Everest gripped me more than Titanic did. Nonetheless, both are good games and Astraware knows it as the premier small screen developers partner with BigFishGames to bring Hidden Expedition: Titanic to handheld devices.

The hidden object game with the legendary Titanic theme allows players to search the wreckage for antique artifacts for the Titanic Museum. It wouldn’t surprise me if Astraware starts releasing more hidden object games. In fact, I wonder what took so long

This game works well on the small screen since you tap your stylus on the found objects or use the five-way control scheme (I believe this relies on buttons).

Compatible devices include Palm OS devices with high-resolution screens running OS5 and above, and Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs running WM2003, 2003SE, 5 and 6. The game retails for $19.95 and you can try before you buy.

I hadn’t planned on mentioning the new logo, but Andy Mason convinced me. He said he reads the blog through another client rather than on the site. When he left a comment for another entry, he discovered the new logo. So he suggested mentioning the new logo so those reading blog entries in a reader or other application know about it especially since I showed you three candidates.

I’m happy with the logo because it translates well to different media (favicon, business cards, printed note cards and so on). The previous one was lovely, but didn’t translate well for print and I was tired of the favicon I created (well, it wasn’t too creative).

This time, I used HTML-Kit’s FavIcon from Pics tool to create the favicon (Thank you, HTML-Kit!). The M could be stronger, but what can you do with a teeny 16×16 pixels?

If the site changes colors for whatever reason, it’ll be easier to change the seal color. It won’t be strange since seals come in different colors.

Logo Design Works impressed me. Two people worked on the design and they were one of the fastest and most effective designers I’ve worked with. The company has an excellent process in place and listens to customers. I wasn’t an easy case since I didn’t know what I wanted and they did the whole thing within a few days (not counting the time I had to make up my mind).

I believe that if a client makes you more miserable than happy, then it’s time to break up the relationship. But what if you’re concerned about the income from the client? Does it pay when the client causes you much grief and stress? That can affect your health, which means spending money on medicine and doctor’s appointments.

Think of how much work you’d finish if you enjoy working with every client. Maybe you’d be able to add a few more for every deadweight client. The time and energy you spend with a difficult client may be enough that you can replace the person with two or three new clients. I picked up this great tip from Book Yourself Solid.

Besides, any good business knows it must regularly market the business. A business should be able to replace a fired or dropped client in a short time. So how do you fire the client? Here are 10 ways to fire the client from hell. The article looks at different types of clients and how to get out of the situation.

Every new release of an application adds more features, but not always for the better. Get ten tips for getting feature frenzy under control. In writing an article about social network sites, I looked at over two dozen sites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Sermo, TravBuddy, MyCreativeCommunity. Wikipedia provides a list of many social networking sites.

I noticed most specialty social network sites do one thing well — they provided the appropriate features that fit their site’s purpose and target market. They didn’t try to capture the features everyone else has.

The following is a shorthand version of Frank Spiller’s excellent post:

1. Get task-focused.

2. Map business requirements to user tasks.

3. Talk about user tasks not features.

4. Design for probability not possibility.

5. Validate features with user tasks.

6. Map features to tasks.

7. Create a feature-task matrix.

8. Think scenarios first, use cases next.

9. Use tasks to test features, and features to test tasks.

10. Use diary studies to evaluate feature adoption over time.

Remember that users won’t necessary use every feature in an application. It costs to add a feature — so make sure it’s worth the cost.

In Mystery P.I.: The Lottery Ticket, players aren’t the lucky lottery winner. In fact, the lottery winner runs into a little bad luck. Grandma Rose, owner of the winning lottery ticket, lost her ticket. I put on my P.I. fedora and take the case to help find the missing ticket. As an incentive, Grandma will pay $20 million if I find it within 12 hours. Of course, that won’t be real money, and you’ll have to settle for feeling proud if you find the ticket.

With a new hidden object game practically coming out every week, it’s hard for such games to surprise long-time players. Mystery P.I.: The Lottery Ticket contains a beefy storyline along with a few unforeseen turns. Its mini-game is yet another memory card game and its game-within-a-game involves finding 20 keys to unlock the bonus game mode. In the bonus game, known as Unlimited Seek and Find, you hunt for all the items and locations that appear in the original game mode. It also contains a bonus location.

The game starts easy with a list of 18 to 20 objects to find within two or three places in the city. As your eyes and detective skills sharpen, the game adds more objects and locales. With every completed level, the list of objects to find grows working its way up to almost 100 objects in the late levels! It sounds tedious to look for so many things in a level, but really the game draws you in and motivates you to stay on the case.

This game will test expert hidden object game players with underwater scenes where objects don’t appear in their normal colors. You also have to find multiples of the same items and figure out clever items such as “5 spots.” The more challenging levels consist of many objects to make your eyes work harder to find the ones you need.

Mystery P.I.: The Lottery Ticket doesn’t overdo the reusing of objects like hidden object games tend to do. It also comprises of many scenes, so you won’t feel like you’ve seen the same scene 20 times or by the time you return to a scene — you will have forgotten the location of specific objects.

Though the memory often appears in hidden object games, you don’t just look for identical objects. You may need to find items of the same color, items that are similar but not the same, or items that go together like glove and ball. After completing the memory game, you earn a clue to help you find the lottery ticket. There are 20 levels in the game, and thus 20 clues.

One of the biggest annoyances about the game is that spiders appear too often. Not a good thing for someone with arachnophobia (me!). Also, clicking the correct object doesn’t always work and the game works too hard in trying to trick the player by using quirky names for objects. In another instance, you could click on an object that matches an item on the list, but it wouldn’t be the right one.

The game lasts a long time, so you get your money’s worth. Mystery P.I.: The Lottery Ticket does a superb job in providing a sound storyline, a nice range of scenes, a variety of objects, good quality graphics and an endless number of hints (providing you pay thousands of fake dollars for them).

Download and try Mystery P.I.: The Lottery Ticket

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows ME/98SE/2000/XP/Vista
• 350MHz or faster processor
• 128 MB RAM
• 16 MB graphics and sound card
• 75 MB available disk space
• DirectX 7.0 or later

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

• I love Wikipedia, but I know it’s not 100% reliable and sometimes you need more than one resource. Beyond Wikipedia: 20 References You Can’t Do Without points to other resources.

• I started reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, but wasn’t impressed. 10 Overrated Business Books (and What to Read Instead) also thinks 7 Habits is overrated.

• In addition to 10 Tips For Marketing Your Book Online, check out Plug Your Book.

• 5 Tips to TRULY becoming your OWN BOSS

• Proofreading Test and Tips — I prescribe to the “put it away for a day” proofing method.

• Contests (writing) and Agencies to Avoid [Thanks, Sage]

• Marketing Lessons from Apple

• “You Ain’t All That!” — A Marketing Copy Autopsy

• Games for the Brain